SOMERSET – It would be an understatement to say Police Chief Joseph Ferreira didn’t react well to town officials’ proposal to cut nearly 10 percent of his budget and eliminate the ranks of lieutenants to save funds.

As Ferreira completes his last two months as chief, his latest confrontation Wednesday night with Selectmen Chairman Donald Setters was, perhaps, the most explosive in their stormy public relationship.

“You’re out of order!” Setters yelled.

“You’re out of order!” he shouted several more times.

“You can call me out of order all you want,” Ferreira shouted back.

“I think it’s horrible putting it on the backs of police officers,” Ferreira began that particular exchange with Setters.

He was responding to Setters telling him that with two reserves ready to enter the police academy this summer the department would have “a full complement” of patrolmen, of what he termed “boots on the ground.”

During a meeting in which the board and Town Administrator Dennis Luttrell laboriously debated the job parameters for selecting the next police chief – including a proposed residency requirement – bubbling differences of opinion spilled over in the budget debate.

Luttrell made clear he was following a majority of the board’s directive by increasing the police cuts above the $170,000 (6.4 percent) that Ferreira proposed two weeks ago.

Luttrell said that budget of $2.26 million from Ferreira was for a 31-member department.

Ferreira has maintained voters at the May 2013 Annual Town Meeting authorized a 32-member department by overwhelmingly rejecting selectmen’s proposal to cut $100,000 and retaining the full budget.

After the fiery exchange between the chairman and chief, Luttrell gave this interpretation of his budget proposal to cut another $78,000 in salaries and expenses:

“I never said this was in the best interests of public safety.”He said $50,363 cut from the payroll to eliminate supervisory officers would require impact and collective bargaining with the police union.

“You have said this can be done,” Setters pointedly told Luttrell. He did not say when or where that conversation took place.

Lebeau, who’s called impending police cuts necessary during a period when all three lieutenants will be returning by January, acknowledged the police department is “taking the brunt of it this year.”

He justified that saying, “At no point in time has this town had this magnitude of revenue loss.”

The disagreements weren’t over.

“A future chief is going to have to do something you weren’t accustomed to dealing with,” Setters told Ferreira, reiterating as he has many times the town’s dire financial condition from rapidly declining power plant revenues.

When Ferreira said for a second or third time that his police force is responsible for protecting “life, liberty and property,” Setters retorted, “We all have these catch phrases … and I have to sift through that.”

“This is not a level-services budget. This is a reduction in services,” Luttrell responded, describing it as cuts “to the bone of operations."

After Setters called for a vote on what he called the town administrator’s proposed budget of less than $2.2 million — compared with $2.48 million this year— Lebeau proposed a different tact: He suggested he sit with Luttrell and Ferreira to go over the budget changes because he said the board did not have the new police budget in its materials.

Ferreira, who’s retiring after nine years as chief and 30 on the department on June 3, told selectmen, “Let the townspeople decide, and go with that.”